Investment Thread

Wheat/// said:
That’s one case out of multiple millions. If that individual is a legal immigrant, he has rights and the courts will rectify the situation.
Click to expand...
Returning to the investment thread, has any one person ever destroyed so much net worth in such a short period of time? We know from history that tariffs didn’t work over 100 years ago when there was much less international trade. So why would anyone expect them to work in 2025? The economy that was inherited was actually in a good place with the highest growth rate of any developed country. The dollar was the coin of the realm for the world. Yes inflation was stubbornly high and the nation’s increasing debt is unsustainable. Now experts predict we will have increased inflation, a slowing growth rate and the status of the dollar has taken a troubling turn. Many predict a recession. Buying the “dips” doesn’t sound like a good strategy. Earlier this week some traders on CNBC suggested selling when the market is up rather than buying the dips. If I was 15 years younger I would ride it out. But as a retired person I can’t wait four or five years for a stock to recover. As I write this the market ended up this week, so perhaps I am overly pessimistic, but I doubt it. Our country’s reputation has taken a huge hit on the world stage. Repairing a reputation is hard. Just ask Elon!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Wheat/// said:
As I see it, the administration has committed to a great plan and is attempting to do what they were voted in to do, try and get American manufacturers back, and get our trade deficits and debt to sustainable levels.

That’s a complicated and ugly task that past administrations have been unwilling to tackle. It’s gonna require stepping on some toes and breaking some norms down to really build back better.

This whole tariff sideshow is short term, just them implementing a hammer in step one. The sharper tools will come later in dealing with countries individually.

The U.S. government has a really big toolbox. Some patience is necessary, it’s only been a couple of weeks of serious negotiations, and less than three months since they took office.

If they can’t make progress towards those goals within this term, my vote will go towards someone else next election.
Click to expand...
I honestly can't even tell if this is a bit
 
bird said:
I pulled the trigger today on purchasing a MacBook Air as my retirement laptop, spurred by price and availability concerns. I wonder how many others are making similar decisions? Maybe there will be a bit of temporary juice to consumer spending.
Click to expand...
Back in December, I purchased several ThinkPads in anticipation of tariffs on China. And if the tariffs never happened, it can't be bad having spare computers that are generally user-friendly to repair, especially since everything new is trending hostile towards repair. And now this: https://mashable.com/article/tariff-news-dell-hp-lenovo-halt-laptop-shipments

I paid cash for another used vehicle back home. Again, notoriously easy to work on, low mileage, but the used vehicle market has been a disaster since cash for clunkers anyway, so why not bite before everything shoots up? And now this: https://archive.is/Tm7MW

I have an iPad Pro from 2018 that needs replacing. In all my years, it's the best piece of tech I've ever owned. Still works fine after seven years, but somewhere along the way it got a cracked screen. I'll probably lock in its replacement this week and hope that everything is sorted out in another 8 years when it's time for a replacement.
 
unix_joe said:
Back in December, I purchased several ThinkPads in anticipation of tariffs on China. And if the tariffs never happened, it can't be bad having spare computers that are generally user-friendly to repair, especially since everything new is trending hostile towards repair. And now this: https://mashable.com/article/tariff-news-dell-hp-lenovo-halt-laptop-shipments

I paid cash for another used vehicle back home. Again, notoriously easy to work on, low mileage, but the used vehicle market has been a disaster since cash for clunkers anyway, so why not bite before everything shoots up? And now this: https://archive.is/Tm7MW

I have an iPad Pro from 2018 that needs replacing. In all my years, it's the best piece of tech I've ever owned. Still works fine after seven years, but somewhere along the way it got a cracked screen. I'll probably lock in its replacement this week and hope that everything is sorted out in another 8 years when it's time for a replacement.
Click to expand...
Re used vehicles, in the short run publicly traded dealers with large inventory may see a short term bump as the value of inventories goes up, and medium term advantage as used car segment gains ground as compared to new, but getting quality inventory will become an issue due to, inter alia, higher prices and fewer vehicles coming off leases. Also, a general recession could suppress demand. Overall, these companies may be reporting good results for a couple of quarters.
 
Flipped some AMD this week for a small profit. Missed my best chance on Wednesday as I was stuck in meetings all afternoon. Will opportunistically trade this market volatility.
 
Bostondevil said:
For those of you wondering why I've suddenly showed up in this thread - it's bundaberg's fault, blame him.

I've read the last 10 pages or so and now I'm going back to my usual haunts. Maybe I'll show up in another 7 years.
Click to expand...
Yeah this hasn’t been a finance/investing thread in a while. It’s now just the new political forum sadly. Not sure why these past 10+ pages didn’t get moved. I think there’s been less than 5 posts on investing and a hundred on economic policy decisions. Policy talk and the like is political, even more so with the outright usage of names and clear disdain people have expressed. I don’t disagree with the posts but they don’t belong here.
 
JNort said:
Yeah this hasn’t been a finance/investing thread in a while. It’s now just the new political forum sadly. Not sure why these past 10+ pages didn’t get moved. I think there’s been less than 5 posts on investing and a hundred on economic policy decisions. Policy talk and the like is political, even more so with the outright usage of names and clear disdain people have expressed. I don’t disagree with the posts but they don’t belong here.
Click to expand...
In today’s world how do we sort what is and what is not a discussion of investing. A possible recession is definitely pertinent to any discussion about investing in the stock market. The effect of tariffs is a consideration in investing. Is Apple a buy with so many products subject to a confiscatory tariff on all things made in China? History lessons are part of an investment strategy. The last high tariffs about a hundred years ago help cause great disruptions in the stock markets. If you wish to ignore economic policy decisions as you suggest what guidance should we use for investment decisions.
 
bird said:
Re used vehicles, in the short run publicly traded dealers with large inventory may see a short term bump as the value of inventories goes up, and medium term advantage as used car segment gains ground as compared to new, but getting quality inventory will become an issue due to, inter alia, higher prices and fewer vehicles coming off leases. Also, a general recession could suppress demand. Overall, these companies may be reporting good results for a couple of quarters.
Click to expand...
So assuming the worst, would something like Carmax be a short term buy until the belt tightening starts? Their costs will go up but so will their volume. Not to be macabre but in this scenario defaults will also go up increasing the inventory (but less the pool of people will go down).
 
JNort said:
Yeah this hasn’t been a finance/investing thread in a while. It’s now just the new political forum sadly. Not sure why these past 10+ pages didn’t get moved. I think there’s been less than 5 posts on investing and a hundred on economic policy decisions. Policy talk and the like is political, even more so with the outright usage of names and clear disdain people have expressed. I don’t disagree with the posts but they don’t belong here.
Click to expand...
I agree there have been a scattering of posts where this is definitely true. However, as somebody else inferred, investing cannot just be talk about individual stocks or investing strategies. The overall market picture has to be part of it, and the current US economic policy is affecting all markets. It is front page news, in many countries and in multiple stories, every day.

Economics was one of my majors, so my disdain for the current policies is likely to shine through. Markets hate frictions and uncertainty and anything that discourages rational behaviors as much as they hate most anything else. We have those in spades. To ignore those investing factors in the name of avoiding any and all political discussion would be ostrich-like.

Personally, my wife and I have some funds that we were slated to gradually enter into the market this year. We put a small percentage of those funds into the market after the initial three days of drop but otherwise we have put them on pause because IMO the downside risk on pretty much everything outweighs the upside. What we are trying to evaluate is how we will invest for the remainder of Trump’s term, given that these shocks and drags are likely to continue. At some point we need to take these funds out of our mattress; the single thing most holding us back is Trump’s unpredictability.

Honestly, I don’t know how to have any reasonable investing discussion without discussing US governmental policy. It’s just where we are.
 
budwom said:
Ha, Tim Cook sent someone a very lovely Easter basket.
Click to expand...
CameronBornAndBred said:
Or the administration realized that taking away our toys is a bad idea.
Click to expand...
Don’t mess with the Nintendo fanboys. They got a Switch 2 coming in June. Each exemption weakens their hand. If they exempt the big ticket items the US consumer probably could absorb the increase of the cheap stuff. Probably lets them save face and not hit the consumer too. Havoc for Temu and Shein but I’m not a fan of that trend of cheap crap anyway.
 
jafarr1 said:
I agree there have been a scattering of posts where this is definitely true. However, as somebody else inferred, investing cannot just be talk about individual stocks or investing strategies. The overall market picture has to be part of it, and the current US economic policy is affecting all markets. It is front page news, in many countries and in multiple stories, every day.

Economics was one of my majors, so my disdain for the current policies is likely to shine through. Markets hate frictions and uncertainty and anything that discourages rational behaviors as much as they hate most anything else. We have those in spades. To ignore those investing factors in the name of avoiding any and all political discussion would be ostrich-like.

Personally, my wife and I have some funds that we were slated to gradually enter into the market this year. We put a small percentage of those funds into the market after the initial three days of drop but otherwise we have put them on pause because IMO the downside risk on pretty much everything outweighs the upside. What we are trying to evaluate is how we will invest for the remainder of Trump’s term, given that these shocks and drags are likely to continue. At some point we need to take these funds out of our mattress; the single thing most holding us back is Trump’s unpredictability.

Honestly, I don’t know how to have any reasonable investing discussion without discussing US governmental policy. It’s just where we are.
Click to expand...
I don’t disagree that they are intertwined. However we have a separate thread specifically for that crossover and it’s the politics forum where the policy part of this is meant to go. This thread was for sharing and helping others with investment decisions. In other words this thread was meant for discussing what things you are interested in buying, selling, holding, shorting, keeping tabs on and general advice. The policies that affect those decisions goes into the politics thread.

This thread currently has nothing to do with investing and is all about economic policy debates at best and at its worst we have several members ignoring even that and using the chance to discuss how much they despise certain politicians (again not that I disagree with them).

These past couple of weeks have been great for investing opportunities yet we haven’t covered it once because it’s bogged down in policy debates. I’m personally up almost 8-10% just based on investment choices in that time frame.
 
Last edited:
JNort said:
I don’t disagree that they are intertwined. However we have a separate thread specifically for that crossover and it’s the politics forum where the policy part of this is meant to go. This thread was for sharing and helping others with investment decisions. In other words this thread was meant for discussing what things you are interested in buying, selling, holding, shorting, keeping tabs on and general advice. The policies that affect those decisions goes into the politics thread.

This thread currently has nothing to do with investing and is all about economic policy debates at best and at its worst we have several members ignoring even that and using the chance to discuss how much they despise certain politicians (again not that I disagree with them).

These past couple of weeks have been great for investing opportunities yet we haven’t covered it once because it’s bogged down in policy debates. I’m personally up almost 8-10% just based on investment choices in that time frame.
Click to expand...
So what has been working for you during this period? For me, the uncertainty has kept me from making any active investment decisions. My few actions during this period have been taking small amounts of money out of the market (someone else described it as reverse dollar cost averaging).
 
I’m not sure if I can respond since it seems the mods are tightening the discussion on this topic, so I’ll be careful and brief.
(Although I agree discussing this issue does have an impact on investment decisions, and should be OK, as long as things stay civil)

As I see it, I’s an example of why I’ve been preaching patience. We don’t know the plans, or the adjustments that will be made, until something like this is announced.

I bought the dip last week and was not concerned the tarrifs would be as big of a deal as the people running around like the house was on fire.

Buy when there’s blood in the streets. There was a lot of blood last week.

So far, I’ve been right.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top